Album: AAI
Thrill Jockey, 2021
Thrill 537

Mouse on Mars, the Berlin-based duo of Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma, approach electronic music with an inexhaustible curiosity and unparalleled ingenuity. Operating in their unique orbit within dance music’s nebulous echosystem, the duo’s hyper-detailed productions are inventive, groundbreaking but always possessing a signature joyful experimentation. A genre-less embrace of cutting-edge technologies have ensured that each Mouse on Mars release sounds strikingly modern, a fact made more remarkable when one reflects on the duo’s 25 years of making music. New album AAI (Anarchic Artificial Intelligence) takes Toma and Werner’s fascination with technology and undogmatic exploration a quantum leap further. Collaborating with writer and scholar Louis Chude-Sokei, a collective of computer programmers and longtime Mouse On Mars collaborator/percussionist Dodo NKishi, the duo explores artificial intelligence as both a narrative framework and compositional tool, summoning their most explicitly science-fiction work to date.

AAI compiles some of the most immediate and gripping music in Mouse on Mars’ extensive catalogue. Emerging from a primordial ooze of rolling bass and skittering electronics, hypnotic polyrhythms and pulsing synthesizers propel the listener across the record’s expanse. Hidden in the duo’s hyper-detailed productions is a kind of meta-narrative. Working with AI tech collective Birds on Mars and former Soundcloud programmers Rany Keddo and Derek Tingle, the duo collaborated on the creation of bespoke software capable of modelling speech. What appears to be Louis Chude-Sokei narrating through the story is in fact the AI speaking. Text and voice from Chude-Sokei and DJ/producer and programmer Yağmur Uçkunkaya (DJ Rayne) were fed into the software as a model, allowing Toma and Werner to control parameters like speed or mood, thereby creating a kind of speech instrument they could control and play as they would a synthesizer. The album’s narrative is quite literally mirrored in the music - the sound of an artificial intelligence growing, learning and speaking. Artwork was provided by the inventor of the computer graphics language Processing, Casey Reas, a further exploration of technology’s application in the context of art.

In Chude-Sokei’s text, as machine learning advances, robots begin to develop language, conscience, empathy - “anarchic” and unpredictable qualities. Drawing parallels between the evolution of human and machine, AAI uses technology as a lens to examine deep philosophical questions. The question of how we use technology and world resources feels particularly poignant and timely as we head into 2021. AAI posits that we must embrace AI and technology as a collaborator to break out of our current cultural and moral stagnation, and to ensure our survival as a species. As Werner explains: “AI is capable of developing qualities that we attach to humans, like empathy, imperfection and distraction, which are a big part of creativity. We need to get past the old paranoia that fears machines as the other, as competitors who will do things faster or better, because that just keeps us stuck in our selfishness, fear and xenophobia. Machines can open up new concepts of life, and expand our definitions of being human.“
https://www.thrilljockey.com/products/aai

New Definitions

About the track:

"I was really impressed with the theme of sleep that Guy Andrews (@guyandrews) tackled in [MT][NT][ET] and the idea of reflecting the mental activity that occurs during sleep. Based on this concept, I tried to reflect the sudden changes in dream state and the idea of not being able to continue the same dream after waking up, no matter how much we want to. In the artwork, my wife İdil tried to convey the stages descending into deep sleep and changes in mental activity during dreams" 

Artwork: İdil Oraydın
Mix: Non Square
Mastering: Emre Malikler

Guy Andrews - 2.5 (Non Square Remix)

Lyonel Bauchet Tractatus Lyra-Organismus DiN79

Release date 16th June 2023
Limited to 300 copies Digipak CD

Film and media composer Lyonel Bauchet is best known in the electronic music world for his mastery of the Buchla modular synthesiser. Indeed this is the instrument that was in the foreground for his previous two DiN releases, The Secret Society (DiNDDL11) and The Diver (DiN68). However for his third album on the DiN imprint he has eschewed this familiar territory and instead focused on a collection of analogue gear from Soma Laboratory. Their most famous instrument, the Lyra-8, is described by them as an Organismic Synthesiser and certainly has an experimental edge to it. Along with other Soma creations as well as more traditional keyboards and orchestral string textures Bauchet has created a unique and compelling sound world unlike anything you’ve ever heard before.

Taking his inspiration from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by the 20th century Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bauchet has morphed the title of this inspirational work into a play on synth words. The titles of the album are taken from sentences in the French translation relating to the seven main aphorisms in the book.

Musically this astonishing album marries the experimental nature of the Soma synths with their grungy lo-fi percussion grooves and swarming, scintillating clouds of texture with the filmic, cinematic world that Bauchet often composes in for his library music work. Delicate piano motifs lead to orchestral crescendos accompanied by a mystical atmosphere of swirling drones and deep soundscapes. This is a true headphone album in that listening via this method will reveal the myriad details and beautiful complicity of this unique album.

Another great release from the DiN label released in a beautiful Digipak CD edition showcasing new and refreshingly different electronic music.
 
01 Tout ce qui a lieu   10:17
02 Le grand miroir   08:42
03 L’ordre à priori des choses   07:11
04 Le nombre des noms   03:41
05 Une seule et même réalité   08:52
06 Égalité des signes   03:33
07 Sur ce dont on ne peut parler   06:03

Total Time :  48:17

Tractatus Lyra-Organismus

Buy CD / download

Tractatus Lyra-Organismus by Lyonel Bauchet (DiN79) Demo Mix

London Odense Ensemble: "Live at Jaiyede Jazz Festival" LP shipping now! www.elparaisorecords.com

Limited edition of 300 copies on transparent ochre vinyl.

Info:

London Odense Ensemble is a powerhouse quintet that combines forces from the Causa Sui/El Paraiso family tree (Jakob Skøtt, Jonas Munk, Martin Rude) with the vibrant, experimental London jazz scene (Tamar Osborn, Al MacSween). On two studio full-lengths, released in 2022 and 2023, they have explored the confluence of psychedelia, improvisation and cosmic jazz. On this set, recorded at the 2021 edition of Denmark’s Jaiyede Jazz Festival, the energy is cranked up another notch or two.

Comprised almost entirely of exclusive material not found on the two studio records these three sonic excursions dive head-on into the fiery side of the group’s sound. Taking up the entire A-side “Energy Ascending” starts out as a gently flowing piece of dreamy jazz that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a late 1960s Pharoah Sanders record. As the piece evolves the guitar takes it into rock territory, where it dissolves in a mesmerising breakdown before commencing a build of epic proportions, lead by Tamar Osborn’s baritone sax, channelling The Stooges as much as John Coltrane. Heavy. 

On the B-side things get more electronic and spacy. Here the ensemble uses album track “Sojourner” as a starting point for a new improvisation guided by Al MacSween’s virtuoso keyboard work. The rhythm section creates a hypnotic foundation for layers of synths and electric keys to fully blossom and travel into cosmic territory.

London Odense Ensemble: "Energy Ascending (Live At Jaiyede Jazz Festival)"

Lyrics, music, vocals - Sveta Ben
Music, arrangements, mixing - Galya Chikiss
Mixing, mastering - Robin Hunt
Artwork - Sasha Belsky

Пожалуй, биолюминисценция - умение живых организмов сиять - это один из лучших примеров, который дает нам природа. Чем сильнее  раздражение внешней среды, тем ярче сияние. Эту песню мы посвящаем  тем, кто от тяжелых испытаний или от беспрестанной помощи другим иногда не находит больше силы сиять. Ну, и тем, кто всегда не забывает искрится как сгусток самых ярких  блесток, преодолевая все раздражающие факторы внешней среды.
...
Perhaps, bioluminescence - the ability of living organisms to glow - is one of the best examples that nature provides us. The stronger the irritation from the external environment, the brighter the glow. This song is dedicated to those who, from either heavy trials or constant assistance to others, sometimes find it hard to find the strength to shine. Well, and to those who never forget to sparkle like a cluster of the brightest sparkles, overcoming all irritating factors in the external environment.

Сгусток блёсток

Sveta Ben & Galya Chikiss - Сгусток блёсток / Bunch of Sparkles

Track from NE17 D.Å.R.F.D.H.S. - Mörkret, kylan, tystnaden & ensamheten

Order here: northernelectronics.bandcamp.com
https://clone.nl/item34959.html


D.Å.R.F.D.H.S. - Eremiten

Ethiopian Records - In My Sleep

From the Myth About Flat World album out at Black Mara label:
https://creation6.bandcamp.com/album/myth-about-flat-world

Mountain Roots

This is an excerpt of the first of two improvised concerts given at Aqtushetii in the village of Omalo in the northern Tusheti region of Georgia, deep in the Caucasus mountains. It's played on a Prophet synthesizer in a tuning I got from Kraig Grady, which is called Sisiutl. A 12 tone 11-limit self mirroring scale in just intonation. A Centaur-like scale with 11s instead of 5s. The other sounds are grass hoppers I had recorded in the field below us during the day, as well as some looped contact mic'd instruments also made that day. A metal barrel suspended from a ceiling beam and metal spring strung between two nails on a board (built with the help of some enthusiastic locals and played with mallets). Thanks go out to Robert McDougall for inviting me and Scott McCulloch for hosting me on this residency.

London Odense Ensemble: "Energy Ascending (Live At Jaiyede Jazz Festival)"

elparaisorecords

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